The Emperial Group, along with numerous industry stakeholders, has enthusiastically taken on what all can agree is the daunting task towards revitalising a positive spirit within public education by organising from a ground-up, community-based approach a Trades Fair Symposium at the Bermuda College on May 29 and 30.

We were first approached by a dedicated public school teacher seeking our support as social activists to assist in piloting a programme geared to put our schoolchildren in direct interface with the technical trades, giving the pupils an up-close and personal exposure of skills options that may capture their interest in future career goals.

Emperial's mantra is: “Unity in the community world vibe, fighting with peace and not for it.” The Progressive Labour Party stands by: “United we stand, divided we fall.” The One Bermuda Alliance suggests the need for bringing different and diverse groups together in alignment.

The common thread between all these groups is “unity”.

And if unity is the thread, then history is the needle. We need look no further than our own past to find our instructions.

We just recently experienced the Annual Exhibition — an event dating back some 180 years to when we were an agricultural society and the leadership at the highest level of this country was mobilised to ensure that we would have the skills to feed ourselves.

Think carefully on what that represents. In an era of limited resources and profound uncertainty, Bermuda's leaders did not wait for circumstance to correct itself. They organised. They convened. They put skill at the centre of public life and called the community to witness it, celebrate it and transmit it to the next generation. That was not an accident of tradition — it was a deliberate act of survival.

This same blueprint is needed today to address the technical trades.

The challenge before us is not so different from the one our forebears faced. Then, the question was whether this island could sustain itself from its own soil. Today, the question is whether it can sustain itself from its own hands — whether the electricians, the plumbers, the welders, the carpenters, the masons, and the audiovisual technicians who keep this island functioning will have successors trained and ready when the time comes to pass the torch.

An island that cannot build, repair and maintain its own infrastructure is an island permanently indebted to the price and the schedule of someone else's labour. The trades are not a secondary concern to the economy — they are its foundation.

Every luxury hotel that draws our visitor dollar was built by a tradesperson. Every home that shelters our families stands on the mastery of people who knew their craft. To allow that knowledge to thin out from one generation to the next is not merely a workforce problem — it is a civic failure of the first order.

The Trades Fair Symposium is our answer, modelled on the wisdom we already possess. Not an imported programme, not a foreign consultant's recommendation — a home-grown convening rooted in the same instinct that gave us the Exhibition: that skill must be seen, celebrated, and handed on in public, with the full investment of community.

Like life, education is a journey and not a destination. So stay tuned as we roll out the different stakeholders through all media platforms and radio shows where we endeavour to have industry leaders speaking to the importance of education as it relates to the economy and the wellbeing of this country — especially the needs of our general public and school youths in particular.

The blueprint already exists. Bermuda has done this before. Now we do it again — and we do it together.

“Unity in the community world vibe — Fighting with Peace and not for it”

• Gladwyn Simmons is the cofounder of the Emperial Group. The Trades Fair Symposium: Build to Last takes place at Bermuda College on May 29 and 30. The Emperial Group welcomes trade professionals, educators, parents, students, and all community stakeholders to participate